This week’s Thursday track exclusive is coming to you on a Saturday. We play by our own rules around here…

oming to you a little later than normal, this week’s exclusive track is Oceans, the first single from Rick Warren’s debut album Proximity (out 14 July). The album features eight tracks written, performed and produced entirely by Rick himself, and today Songwriting is proud to bring you not just a first listen to Oceans but a first look at the video, too!

Rick grew up in a musical household: his father was an opera teacher, his mother a singer. Classically trained from an early age, his first love was opera, but it was only when he discovered the likes of Jeff Buckley, Elliott Smith and Nick Drake that he began to find his own voice. He signed a recording contract at the age of 17 but became disillusioned with the record industry, and since then has divided his time between producing for other artists such as Thank You Scientist and the charmingly named The Front Bottoms, and studying neuroscience at Columbia University in New York, where he’s currently enrolled on the PhD programme.

But now he’s back in the solo saddle once more. Describing the video to Oceans, he says: “On the bare walls of his childhood bedroom, Rick Warren paints the story of his debut single. The video, shot in one take, is the first portion of an album-length video in which Warren paints the lyrics, colors, and characters of the album in an increasingly chaotic collage.​”

So, can Rick’s music live up to that of the holy trinity of songwriters mentioned above? We’ll let you be the judges of that…

Like that? Then find out more about Rick Warren on Facebook or at his own website